Our lives are taking on a different rhythm this summer. Jamie is home on Wednesdays and Fridays and MD is off on Fridays and Saturdays. Even though I work from home on Fridays with both he and Jamie home it feels like a 3-day weekend. Every Saturday we both get momentarily confused about where we are in the weekend. A huge bonus to all of this together time is it means that MD and I are also more free to spend time apart from the family. Take a couple of Thursdays ago. Jamie had a sleepover at a friend’s house. My friend D picked him up from daycare and we didn’t see him again until MD picked him up the next morning – actually, I didn’t see him until dinner time as he and MD went to the zoo and ran errands, leaving me blissfully alone in the house to get lots of work done. So, Thursday night, did we go on a date? Did we spend some “quality time” together? Nope. We decided who was going to come home and feed the dog and then went our separate ways. As I was driving to a bar to have a drink with some girlfriends after seeing a certain teenage vampire movie, I thought about how free I felt. How this was my life before having Jamie. And how much fun I was having. The problem is, that life was also full of loneliness, and longing, uncertainty, and sorrow. My life now is full, and busy, and overall joyful. Even thought I grit my teeth every single damn night when Jamie refuses to put his damn pajamas on, or every morning when, sigh, once again, I have to nag him to please take off his seat belt and get out of the car already when we pull up to daycare. This life is full of contradictions, like missing my child and simultaneously relishing freedom.

I work with a woman who just sent her 16 year old off to college last week and we were talking about how strange it is as a parent to not know where your child is, or what he or she is doing. Even though as a teenager he spent plenty of time out of the house and away from her, she knew where he was and when he’d be coming home. It’s a long, slow journey to that place from where I sit, and I’m thankful. Very, very thankful.